Chiang Mai - All the Food That’s Fit to Eat
Night markets
Unlike most other places, where the primary places to eat a meal is at home or in restaurants, Chiang Mai is one of the Asian cities where your meal will most likely come from a market stall. Indeed, Chiang Mai is famous for having some of the coolest night markets in all of Southeast Asia. Here you can find all sorts of things, from traditional clothes primarily for tourists to utilitarian items like machetes, and, of course, food! Lots and lots of food and drinks - fresh fruit juice, fresh smoothies, coconut cakes, stir-fried noodles, piping hot soup, delicious roti, mango sticky rice, and everything on a stick.
The largest of these, the Sunday market (opening around 5pm), stretches for about a mile across most of Old Town, and offers everything from the innocuous pants, paintings and knives, to more unusual figurines, a heap of brass jewelry and stuffed oversized insects, as well as an artisan pounding out tin art in front of passersby (and inviting some to do it with him)
The food likewise goes from ordinary prepared foods on a stick
to you-pick what to put on a stick
to — whoa nelly!
Then, there is the roti
Restaurants
Of course, if you are hankering for a larger meal, there’s lots of amazing restaurants in this city. Naturally, many of them offer familiar thai fair, and if you step a bit away from tourist hotspots, the price is right!
At a 1:35 exchange rate, you got a plate of delicious from-scratch noodles for under $1.50!
Funny enough, the other best plate of noodles we had was at a restaurant in Old Town called “Thai Food” — truth in advertising!
But as anyone will quickly tell you when you mention you’re going to Chiang Mai, you have to try Khao Soi, the northern curry soup dish that’s rarely found in the US. Spicy and pungent, it’s classically topped with falling apart beef or chicken and crunchy noodles. And, as you might expect, the best expression is to be found not in a Michelin star restaurant, but at a corrugated steel shack just off Nimmanahaeminda Rd in Nimman
Of course, the city is cosmopolitan enough to have all kinds of cuisine. For example, we twice went to a delicious (albeit expensive) Japanese restaurant
But our favorite restaurant, that we kept coming back to again and again, was Ginger Farm Kitchen in Nimman. Although with a western polish, the extensive menu of all manner of local recipes continually blew us away.
The banana leaf salad — with lychees, cashews and chicken — was a revelation
The food tour
Still, what do we westerners know about proper Thai food? To get a proper sampling of the authentic places, we took a tour with a local. Over the course of four hours, we sampled at six vendors and fully explored one of the food markets.
Barbecued pork like no other
First stop - this stand is famous for its falling apart pork baked with Thai flavors. When we came back to it on the following day, the line was half an hour long.
Fire-roasted pork and chicken
Another classic northern Thai dish is pork belly and chicken roasted while hanging in giant pots over coals. It comes out a little too crispy for my taste, but the process is fun to watch.
Market
Next, we hit a food market. We had explored some already, of course, but a guided experience is a whole different ballgame. First, of course you have extensive ingredients, produce and seafood. But there’s also a voluminous variety of prepared foods, with all kinds of curries packaged in bags (opening these rubber band sealed bags is a skill we failed master over our six weeks in Thailand).
Having scoured the isles of the market, our guide put together a table of the best it had to offer
Masha gravitated toward the grubs
After the market we hit a super chill fish restaurant
Followed by some hardcore Thai/Lao food. This was an Anthony Bourdain type place where no other patrons were white and the menu made 0 compromises for our sensibilities. Accompanied by an increasingly rowdy <<<what team was it>>> sports team celebrating their win, we were treated to local delicacies like pork fat jelly, tripe soup, barbecued whole pork chunks and the spiciest raw larb of our trip. Although it was a more challenging assortment than we had had until then, the flavors were outstanding!
We would move between all these places in a rented songthaew truck. This got especially fun when we got chased by a motorcycle gang, like a scene out of a Jackie Chen movie
Cooking class
We didn’t just buy our food though, we also learned to make our own.
This was a very professional outfit, run entirely by a family out of the patio in front of their home. Everyone had a cooking station, complete with chef’s knife, cutting board and apron
The beauty of this class was not only that we cooked 5 dishes each during the class, but the three of us could also make different ones! In all, we made papaya salad, pad see ew, pad thai, tom yum, tom kha gai, fresh spring rolls, khao soi (made by Alya solo), green curry, panang curry, and two desserts - mango sticky rice and sweet potato in coconut milk . Moreover, pretty much everything was done from scratch and we could modify the dishes on the fly. Thus, while I loaded up my curry with chilis, Alya could make her khao soi with less curry paste to lower the spice level. Masha then went on to make what she calls “white curry”, aka green curry with so little actual spicy green curry paste that it was mostly white…
The class was so well organized that even a 10 year old could make all five dishes on her own, and she did
When it came to desserts, Alya made her latest love, mango sticky rice
At the end, we got to enjoy the fruits of our labor and have great conversation with fellow travelers. Highly recommend this class — check out Aromdii Thai online or AirBnB experiences.
The quest for durian
Finally, a Thai food post would not be complete without the mention of durian. This glorious beast is everywhere in Thailand, and at human prices! At the night market, you can get a hefty chunk for $5 -- along with a plastic glove to use, so that other people won’t run away from you after the dirty work is done. We later found out in Malaysia that China has been buying up quite a bit of durian produced there, driving prices up astronomically. That made us appreciate the Chiang Mai prices that much more.
As you wonder about the city, there are cafes all over the place that happily put durian into anything and everything
And in their most famous temple complexes, the statues of durian are nearly as big as the Buddhas. Because it’s that fundamental to their identity
I became obsessed with the fruit while in Thailand. Masha forbade the fragrant delicacy from entering our house since she has yet to develop the taste for it or lose enough smelling power to tolerate it. Therefore, I had to resort to wandering about town on the hunt for it. A dish of durian sticky rice makes it all ok… and keeps the doctor — and most others — away.
In short, north Thailand had one of the most diverse, flavorful and amazing cuisines we have experienced anywhere. Be ready to try anything and expand your palate, and it will reward you!
